


the in-between

by lupinely



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: F/F, faye and julia? both lesbians., so here they are having sex in that car., the two of them in the car during the finale is one of my fav scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 00:21:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11002041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: “Wait!” Faye’s cry stops Julia from driving away. Faye grabs the side of the car and leans in, trying to see Julia’s face, trying to understand. “You’rethatJulia?”“Of course I am,” Julia responds. “What does it matter?”“It’s just—” Faye hesitates “—I was beginning to think that you weren’t even real.”





	the in-between

 

 

 

“Wait!” Faye’s cry stops Julia from driving away. Faye grabs the side of the car and leans in, trying to see Julia’s face, trying to understand. “You’re _that_ Julia?”

“Of course I am,” Julia responds. “What does it matter?”

“It’s just—” Faye hesitates “—I was beginning to think that you weren’t even real.”

Julia laughs. It is not a particularly happy sound, but she does seem genuinely amused. “Am I that unbelievable?”

Faye leans her chin on her hands. “That’s not it. It’s more Spike’s whole attitude about you, I guess. Sorry.” There are a million things that she wants to ask Julia, but she can think of none of them at the moment. All she can do is stare. This is Julia? Maybe she understands Spike slightly better now.

“Don’t be,” Julia says. “I know what he’s like.” She puts the car in park, and her hand hovers over the keys as if she is thinking about shutting off the ignition. Faye hopes that she does. “Do you know him well, then?”

“Please,” Faye says. “He doesn’t tell me anything.” She watches Julia. “Have you been on the run like this this whole time?”

“Not like _this_ the whole time,” Julia says, with a quiet sort of smile. “Today was rather spectacular, as days go.”

Faye snorts. “We almost flipped over the divider in the middle of the highway and caused a pileup.”

Julia turns the key in the ignition, and the engine stops. “But we didn’t, did we?”

Faye smiles at her. There is something familiar about this woman, but that is a feeling that Faye has become all too accustomed to. Even with the return of most of her memory of her old life, there are still so many things that she feels and things that she cannot immediately—or most likely ever—understand.

Julia lights a cigarette and looks over at Faye. “Want one?”

“Sure.” Faye accepts the lit cigarette, and Julia takes out another and lights it. Suddenly Faye senses there is something she must immediately tell Julia, if she doesn’t know it already. “I feel I should tell you,” Faye says, “he’s with someone else now.”

The look Julia levels at her could decimate a mountain. “Not me,” Faye adds quickly. “God, no. It’s his—bounty hunting partner.”

“Huh.” Julia lifts the cigarette to her lips. “And?”

“He’s....” Faye does not know how to explain it. How do you explain Spike? But Julia, if anyone, understands.

“He’s happier now,” says Julia. It is not really a question. Faye just nods.

Julia sighs. “You can sit down again, if you want to.” Faye opens the car door and does so, watching Julia the whole time. Julia looks, quite indescribably, sad: which Faye supposes make sense if anything does. The cigarette perched between her fingers trails smoke and ash, and the color of the smoke is the same as her eyes.

“What about you?” Faye asks at last.

“Oh,” Julia says, “I’m just fine. It was never really like that with us, though we both thought it was at the time. We were young and stupid.” She stubs out the cigarette on the side of the car, rather carelessly. “We both wanted out of the syndicate and Spike thought that we would have a better chance if we left together. I thought otherwise.”

“You were probably right,” Faye says.

“I usually am.” Julia looks across at Faye. “Why did you stop me from driving away?”

“It’s not every day you meet a ghost,” Faye says. “I have quite an affinity with them, it seems.”

Julia is gazing at her, her regard frank and open and honest, and Faye does not know how to react to it. “You know,” Julia says at last, “I’ve heard some things about you too, Faye Valentine.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” She looks back towards the horizon. “That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

It always is. Faye finishes her cigarette and flicks it away. Ash trails from the end as it goes.

Julia is watching her. “Did you really mean it when you asked to be partners?”

“Yeah,” Faye says. “But I probably wouldn’t leave them, I guess.” It always seems like the most attractive option whenever anything comes up: just leave the Bebop crew and get on with her life. Accrue more debt somehow. Get her own spaceship maybe. Or lie low on Mars or Europa or something and just fucking not think about any of this. Maybe go back to Earth, check whether Ed is okay. Just check, mind you.

“I figured.”

“Offer still stands, though.”

Julia huffs a quiet laugh. “Please. The other two would hate having me on board within a day. Less, even.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes,” Julia says. “Even Spike.” She falls quiet. “We really only ever made sense when everything was going wrong. And he and Vicious....” She trails off again.

“I thought there was something there that Spike wouldn’t talk about.” Really, Spike is insufferable. For all that he pretends to understand himself, to understand _Faye,_ there is really so much that he will not admit, nor begin to try to understand. Not that Faye can particularly blame him. She is beginning to feel much the same way. “I’d keep them in line if I needed to, though. You’d be my partner, like how they’re each other’s partners.”

“Oh, really? Then wouldn’t we be better off getting our own starship and running off together without them?”

“Well,” Faye says, and turns her head to look down the long empty stretch of road: “there’s the issue of my 300 million woolong debt.”

Julia hisses in a breath. “Damn. That would certainly pose some obstacles.”

Her smile is gentle, and Faye returns it. “Are you just going to keep running?” she finally asks. “One of these days they’re going to catch up to you.”

“I know.” Julia puts her hand to the pistol sitting in the car’s center console, just for a moment. “At this point it’s a matter of making sure that they don’t catch me in the wrong place or time, more than anything else.”

Faye stares at her, incredulous. “You’re just going to let them kill you?”

“As if I can do anything else?”

“You could leave. Leave Mars.”

Julia looks over towards the distant red horizon, and then she turns to meet Faye’s gaze. Her eyes are clear and grey. “No,” she says, “I can’t.” And then she leans forward and kisses Faye.

Faye is not one to reject a kiss from someone as beautiful as Julia, not when she has been thinking this whole time about what kissing her might be like. But it still feels strange, feels a little sad: as if this is easier than talking anymore, like there are things that need to remain unsaid. And it is upon the unsaid things that all the pain afterwards is built.

She puts her hands in Julia’s long hair, weaves it through her fingers. “Why are we doing this?” she asks, because she knows, already, that they will.

Julia shrugs. “Why not?” She adds a small smile. “Whatever happens....”

Happens. And maybe something good, something sweet happening before the end would be exactly what you need to get you through it. Faye feels tears sting at her eyes, and she forces them away. She is not soft, not sensitive; Julia isn’t, either. But maybe there can still be comfort found between them.

“You pick up a lot of girls in this car?” Faye asks her.

Julia smirks. “You know,” she says, “not really,” and leans in to kiss Faye again.

Faye deepens the kiss. After a few moments, she scrambles rather gracelessly over the center console so that she can straddle Julia, her knees on either side of Julia’s thighs, her hands framing Julia’s face. Anyone could drive past them right now: but they have been here for half an hour and not a single person has even appeared in sight. Faye doesn’t care either way. She has been so fucking lonely—to be brought back to life but have no memory, not know yourself, and to be surrounded afterwards by men who leer at you and grab your ass when all you really want to do is find a woman who smiles a little crookedly at you and fuck her brains out—

Julia hitches her fingers in the front of Faye’s shorts. “Your outfit is fucking ridiculous, do you know that?”

Faye laughs. “Yeah,” she says. “You know—I don’t even know why I wear it?”

“I’m not surprised.” Julia runs her fingertips over Faye’s lower abdomen, and Faye kisses her again, still playing with her long hair as Julia slides her fingers over Faye’s hipbones, the bend of her waist, the small of her back, and then digs in with her nails there and draws them up Faye’s back, not aggressively, but not gently either.

Faye nips at Julia’s lower lip and kisses down her jawline, her neck, and starts kissing her collarbone and throat. Julia tilts her head back and laughs: a really beautiful sound, a happy carefree sound that Faye has not heard from her until this moment. She finds that she rather likes it.

“It’s a shame really,” Julia says, still moving her hands over Faye’s back and subtly moving her hips between Faye’s legs, “that I haven’t yet eaten a girl out in the back of this car.”

Faye groans. “That’s definitely something we can fix.”

It is something of a scramble to get into the backseat, and there is not a lot of room once they get there. But somehow they make it work. Faye is already uncomfortably turned on, a testament to Julia’s skill at making out but also to just how goddamn desperate Faye is for someone to touch her with something other than aggression or predation. Julia provides that, all too happily: she unclasps the buckles of Faye’s suspenders so that her shorts lie loose around her waist and slides one hand up and under Faye’s shirt to start toying with her breasts.

“Unbutton that,” Julia orders, and Faye does, and then her shirt is open and her shorts and underwear are already sliding down her legs under Julia’s hands. It’s hot, being exposed like this beneath a gorgeous woman who is fully clothed. Faye sighs when Julia twists one of her nipples between her fingers. Julia moves up Faye’s body to start kissing her again, but her other hand slips between the two of them and presses between Faye’s legs.

Faye lets her knees spread open, and she can’t help but moan when Julia moves her fingers, slick from Faye’s pussy already, in slow gentle circles, not touching her clit at all yet but still feeling fucking wonderful. Faye kisses Julia desperately, showing her that she likes what’s happening, yes please, more. She feels Julia smile, give her one last kiss, and then Julia moves between Faye’s legs and goes down on her.

“God.” Faye feels her thighs tense and she has to force herself to relax. She wants to put one hand to Julia’s hair again but doesn’t know if Julia will appreciate that, whether she’ll feel pushed around; she tries it tentatively, and when Julia hums under her breath in response Faye twists her fingers in Julia’s hair and holds on, her other hand bracing against the back of the front car seat.

“You really should have been doing this all the time.” Faye gasps when Julia’s tongue circles her clit. “Real wasted opportunity.”

“I’ll make up for it now,” Julia says, and she slides two fingers inside of Faye.

Faye shudders. It’s good, it’s really fucking good—Julia knows exactly what she’s doing, and her fingers brush over Faye’s g-spot a few times when she swirls her tongue over Faye’s clit. Faye knows she won’t be able to last very long in the face of that. She tries to make it last, tries to enjoy it, her hand tugging at Julia’s hair as Julia fucks her, but before she knows it she is coming against Julia’s face, her mouth, but Julia doesn’t let her go: fucks her through it until Faye’s legs are shaking and she has to say, “Stop, please,” and Julia pulls away.

“Goddamn,” Faye says when she can breathe again. Julia wipes her face with the back of her hand, smiling at her. “Do you—”

Julia shrugs. It does seem as if the prospect of also getting Julia, who is wearing more clothing that Faye was, naked and in a position in the backseat where Faye can go down on her, is something beyond their capability right now.

“No problem,” Faye says, and, naked, she pushes Julia back against the inside of the car door and starts kissing her, her right hand sliding underneath the hem of Julia’s pants and quickly finding its way between her legs.

“Ah,” Julia says breathily. When she tilts her head back Faye starts kissing and sucking at her neck. “Like that, a little slower....”

Faye sets a slow sliding irregular rhythm with her fingers, pressing against Julia’s clit and then down and then up again. Julia’s hands grip at Faye’s bare shoulders, holding on tight. Faye scrapes her teeth against Julia’s collarbone and circles her clit with her finger and Julia doesn’t moan but breathes out, shakily, digs her teeth into her lower lip and holds on. It is not long before Julia comes too, clutching at Faye as she does so. When she is finished, still trembling, she exhales and looks up at Faye, who removes her hands from her pants.

“Very nice,” Faye says, and kisses Julia one last time. It is sweet, and sad, and gentle too. Faye doesn’t want Julia to let her go, but of course she does, and the two of them part.

They are quiet as Faye puts on her clothes and they get into the front seat. Julia holds out her pack of cigarettes, and Faye takes one. Somehow she knows she is never going to see Julia again, and she is sorry for it.

“Tell Vicious to go fuck himself, from me, when you see him,” Faye tells her.

Julia smiles. “I will.”

When both their cigarettes have burned down the to filter, Faye sighs and opens the car door and gets out. It closes behind her with a questionable sort of finality.

“Thanks,” Faye says, feeling kind of like a dumbass. “Take care of yourself, Julia.”

“Yeah,” Julia says; “anytime,” and she gives Faye another one of those impossible-to-read smiles, and then she guns the engine and drives away.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
